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The sonata concept served some of the greatest imaginations in the history of music, but seriously it is, as I like to say to students, “so not a form”. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms were not in need of a standardized template, and in essence what has come to be called sonata form is more like courtroom procedure: a process that allows for an infinite variety of stories to be unfold, from a fender bender to vandalism to murder.
The Kodály Concept of music education is based on the philosophical writings of Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967) and incorporates principles of teaching music developed by his colleagues and students. His writings on music education provided the impetus of developing a new pedagogy for teaching music. On August 30th, we discussed five essential lessons from the Kodály Concept. Below are five additional hallmarks of his work.
You might associate the recorder with memories of a second grade classroom and sounds vaguely resembling the tune of “Three Blind Mice” or “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” While the recorder has become a popular instrument in music education, it also has an extensive and interesting history.
To teach music effectively, we must know our subject—music. We must embody and exemplify musicianship.” (Elliott, Music Matters, 1995, p. 271). But how are we to communicate our musicianship to students in meaningful ways?
It is a commonplace to say that, in Renaissance England, music was everywhere. Yet, however true the statement is, it obscures the fact that music existed in many different forms, with very different functions and very different meanings.
It is a commonplace to say that, in Renaissance England, music was everywhere. Yet, however true the statement is, it obscures the fact that music existed in many different forms, with very different functions and very different meanings.
This weekend, the 32nd International Society for Music Education World Conference will be hosted in Glasgow, Scotland. Researchers, practitioners, and performers will gather to present concerts, talks and discussions. We asked a few attendees for their pre-ISME thoughts and plans. What are you looking forward to at the conference?
Recently I was invited to be the guest clinician for a school district’s new young men’s choral festival. The original composition of the festival changed over the course of planning and, long story short, I ended up with a group of 79 fourth- through ninth-grade male singers.
It’s a bright new year and time to shed off the old, but that doesn’t mean we can’t partake in some favored traditions - especially making New Year’s resolutions. If you’re a teacher or professor, the New Year usually means a new semester, and the opportunity to start fresh by teaching a new class, or bring rejuvenation to your students post-holiday.
More than ever before, educators around the world are employing innovative methods to nurture growth, creativity, and intelligence in the classroom. Even so, finding groundbreaking ways to get through to students can be an uphill battle, particularly for students with special needs.
This month we're spotlighting the unique and beautiful oboe. We asked Heather Calow, lifelong oboe player and now an oboe teacher based in Leicester, UK, what first drew her to the instrument.
Walking the music parenting tightrope isn’t easy for music moms and dads. Figuring out how to be helpful without turning into an overbearing nag can be tricky, especially during a youngster’s early adolescent years. Those often-turbulent years can upend many aspects of a child’s life, including music.
In today’s society, technology is fundamentally embedded in the everyday learning environments of children. The development of educative interactive apps is constantly increasing, and this is undoubtedly true for apps designed to facilitate musical development. So much so that computer-based technology has become an integral part of children’s musical lives
If your experience of school music was anything like mine, you’ll recall those dreaded aural lessons when the teacher put on a recording and instructed you to identify the instruments, to describe the main melody, to spot a key change, perhaps even to name the composer.
Even though I recently turned sixty and have taught at colleges and conservatories, when I hear the words “back to school,” the image that springs to mind is of my teenage self as a Juilliard student in the 1970s. If I ask that self what my main educational breakthrough from those years was, the answer surprises me: discovering what actors learn. Actors study their own emotions.
How about…..Quit Your Job. Buy a Cello. And Get Paid to Change the World through Music!
Turns Out We All Should Engage with Music. Now there’s a thought. But what does this really mean?
Music is powerful and can have a dramatic effect on us.
As, John Haltiwanger on Science says: “Music makes everything better.
It brings people together, and reminds them what a gift it is to be alive and breathing.
Good music is like good food, it’s just plain good. It doesn’t matter where it originated, it’s universally palatable. It transcends both space and time. It unifies people; breaching seemingly impenetrable cultural and generational divides.
Music inspires laughter, tears, song and dance. It’s simultaneously soothing and emotive. It works its way from the top of your head down to the tips of your toes; breathing new energy into every fibre of your body.
Music tells stories, captures complex emotions and breeds diversity. It expresses the inexpressible, making hard times easier, and good times even better.”
One of the Fascinating Features of Music is the Way it has Spectacular Power to Impact our Judgments.
For instance – Music can even influence our sensory perception – our perception of flavour.
The Australian Chamber Orchestra performed recently at a ‘Wine & Music Matching’ Masterclass in the Orchestra’s rehearsal room at Sydney’s Circular Quay, to explore how music can change our sense of taste.
As the Masterclass Testers were tasting the identical wine sipped from each glass, they were listening to different pieces of music played. Some Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven and a modern except from early 20th century Webern. The same wine in each glass with the only changes being the music.
But, as each different music piece played along with each same wine sample, the testers profoundly changed their assessment of the wine.
It happens! It’s sometimes called synaesthesia.
Music is one of the most Impressive and Beautiful Achievements of the human race and deserves a permanent place in Education.
And how can we not be excited by the prospect of Music Benefits with long-term Positive Effects?
Like I need an excuse to revisit the fascinating work of Anita Collins. Anita Collins shares how learning music influences our brain development, and what this means for musical education.
Anyway, the question being asked….. ‘IS PLAYING MUSIC AN OPTION?’
My friend Ginny wants To Play a Musical Instrument. But, It Won’t Be for a Career. And, it’s not going to Make Big Money. So, can this be a Process to Change her World?
Playing a musical instrument is a lifestyle choice that, if practiced correctly, is something that we all can find success in.
But, the pace of daily life in our scrolling, web-surfing culture that fragments concentration and swallows spare time, if we actually have any of that, is ill-suited to the mental absorption of learning music.
Learning a musical instrument is not fast. This is not in that part of life that shouts ‘overnight success!’
It’s not about instant results in an instant world where everything is at our finger tips to consume quickly. Our learning swiping motion is ineffective while learning instrument fingerings – especially if the instrument is an oboe! And there are no apps to take over the sheer persistence of practice.
Not to worry though. If you want to play music beautifully, you have to know how to play a musical instrument beautifully. It’s like nothing you’ve experienced before.
‘In the beginning – at first they say we sound awful. In fact you’re probably going to sound terrible.
And then one day after much practising, rearranging your life to fit in extra fun gigs, upgrading from that first instrument to a real one, and loving every moment of the process. You think, you know that your playing doesn’t sound too bad. By the end of the term it’s well wow! You rock the socks off.’
In a new series on Channel 4 world-renowned classical pianist James Rhodes says music education in the UK has been “decimated”, bemoaning the fact that learning a musical instrument is now seen as a luxury. And, a 2013 Ofsted report showed quality music education was reaching just a minority of pupils. And James asks families in Britain to donate old musical instruments left languishing in cupboards to those who need them.
Richard Gill has some very interesting insights into children’s music education and why it’s a must have for all children.
Because, as long as instrumental music instruction is offered as part of the school day, it remains one of the best ways for kids to learn to be great thinkers, citizens, innovators and human beings. That is the power in instrumental music education. The intellectual growth and happiness of our children depend on us keeping music alive and well in our communities.
The San Diego Youth Symphony’s Community Opus Project, is really interesting.
One of many music education programs sponsored by The NAMM Foundation, helps to introduce at-risk youth to the benefits of music making. Seventh grader Bruno Bello shares how this El Sistema-inspired program has changed his life, and the way he sees his future. Bruno has been a student since 2010.
There’s Only Two Kinds of Music! Good Music. And Bad Music!
So? What Really Is Music?
Chatting with retired musos around the dinner table, conversation inevitably turns to music loved or music unloved. Picking a favourite music genre is as impossible as deciding which musicalinstrument is best! Are we classical music lovers or loathers? Can we agree on something? Anything!
Here is the beautiful thing…It’s actually very hard to explain.
Something that can take your breath away. It just grabs your heart and away you go. A Language of exquisite melodies and astounding rhythms connected to the universe! Music captures something within our hearts, our souls, something that is huge. A Something we all can always connect with.
There are so many interesting conversations to have about Music and it is pointless to argue which Music is best.
And in all fairness we all play favourites! Music Favourites. Best genres. Best sounding instruments! So many choices!
My local newspaper last week covered stories about Musical Theatre; a Classical Gala Evening with an impressive array of sopranos and tenors and string quartets; a High Vibes Hip Hop Festival, and a gig for junior musos at the Brisbane Music Conference.….pitched to young people looking at a career in the music industry.
And you can find news about a concert with the Italian Chamber Orchestra; or the electronic duo Hermitude and music that people can dance to, and sing along to.
Or Bach, maybe Vivaldi. It’s all out there happening in the community.
But what about Fiona who loves Punk Music. It’s what started her love for music! Well, everyone’s favourite DJ Duo Peking Duk are heading for global superstardom and they’re bringing their friends along for the ride.
I’m into Music. It’s a life changing process. I really love it.
It always holds that special place in my heart. But then I love being a musician.
On the surface, the suggestion that the best independent music teachers are those who earn the most money seems ludicrous. No obvious, mathematical correlation can be drawn between fiscal and pedagogical success. We have all encountered incredible educators who struggle to make ends meet, or financially comfortable ones who are mediocre instructors at best.
Yet I argue that there is indeed a parallel. When done right, impact and income are closely related bedfellows. Savvy Music Teachers (SMTs) find ways to make them both go up, in harmony.
How do you create a repertoire for all levels of learning in music education? Kathy and David Blackwell’s repertoire for beginner to intermediate string players covers a huge range of styles whilst introducing new technical points in a step by step way. Their Fiddle Time, Viola Time, and Cello Time series offer attractive tunes that are fun to learn and provide quality teaching material. Find out how and why they wrote their very first tunes for young string players:
Children’s Music Education is too important to be minimized or overlooked.
Articles and lists of why children need to be learning music are easily found on the net.
Everything from improved brains to social and educational benefits. So we can conclusively establish that learning to play a musical instrument is vital for everyone.
Yet, educational authorities have allowed music to be marginalized in many schools.
It seems kids have stopped listening to classical music or learning to play an orchestral instrument? And apparently, 75% of high school students in the US never or rarely take lessons in arts or music. This is not looking good.
I would like to see every school with orchestras, bands, choirs and a good supply of musically competent teachers. Because there’s nothing like enjoying an orchestra playing your favorite music to help you feel great as it rebuilds you from the inside out.
Anyway, what does Richard Gill the highly respected advocate for Children’s Music Education say?
“Don’t be fooled into thinking that because children are listening to pop music at school they are receiving a music education. Indeed, just listening to music of any kind is not music education. What’s more if you peel away the pop jargon, the music the kids are listening to is essentially a simple melody – lots of rhythm and just a waste of time.”
Call me grumpy perhaps, but I have to say, nothing annoys me more than seeing children choosing entertainment through technology.
For instance, kids on a device. IPhone, iPad, spending time scrolling through Facebook and Pinterest images while sorting out twitter feeds.
And there is more. In general education, formal learning is under fire. Have you read about the growing attitudes of some groups of children towards learning in general. A ten year old said this in our local newspaper.
“You Don’t Do School and you just live and learn things…I do whatever I feel like I want to do.”
Mmmm – he will struggle learning music with this attitude. Music is a privilege and a joy but does include attitudes of commitment and hard work.
So! How can we motivate kids to Learn To Play Music? And, how do we motivate the reluctant ones to do so?
Perhaps we might learn something from Youth Sports?
Many children participate in youth sports each year? Viewed as a rite of passage in a child’s development, parents believe that youth sports are good for their kids.
If the clichés that permeate sports broadcasts and locker room speeches are to be believed, sports participation teaches children the value of hard work, builds character, and develops future leaders.
Young children follow and like their sporting heroes and want to be as good as them.
I’m not going to beat about the bush. I think it’s time we considered this a model for Children’s Music Education? Finding music heroes for children to choose to like and follow? Asking this question: ‘Who is your absolute favourite classical musician?’
The real problem is so often children don’t know what music they don’t know about! The music they haven’t heard.
They don’t know what they’re missing until they hear it. And, by tapping into their inner core that loves music, and selecting music outside their experience which will inspire, encourage and motivate, kids can be encouraged to turn around for another look or listen or both. And then it’s: “Oh! I lOVE this music!”
As a former teacher and musician I realise that Kids think classical music is all too complicated and long. My conversation with Kids can go a little bit like this.
“Oh! Chrissy! You actually like Classical Music? Oh I’ll never listen to Classical Music! I don’t like it at all”
“Classical Music”I reply, “should be a grand excuse for stepping out of the world to share exquisite moments of sheer bliss. There’s the have to have music you love to listen to, over and over again. And the magnificent music that keeps us spellbound – the music that you don’t want to ever end.”
As my friend Ginny says: “With classical music you never know what you’re going to get. Some concerts are so exquisite I have to stop myself sobbing out loud.”
Teach Kids Music!
Anyway, moving on. Whether kids play an instrument, sing along, or enjoy the music played by others, every child deserves an adult who will understand how a child can become the very best they can possibly be.
To be sure, teachers who patiently sit through countless music recitals and question their sanity at encouraging those trumpet or violin lessons need do so no longer. A musical moment shared with even one other person, is a treasure that exists at no other time, in no other way.
To be honest I believe the way forward is in ‘Live Music’ being a part of everyone’s day to day. Yet it is not for the majority of people. So why be part of it? Why not we need to ask?”
Stephen P Brown says: “Think about what your plans are tonight or this weekend. Are there simply not enough concerts? Yes – I did just say that.”
When most people think of classical music they think of an orchestra at a large concert hall, but music is far greater than being confined to an exotic square box for a night out once a month or twice a year When someone comes home from work without anything in the calendar (i.e. kids’ sports or band practice, etc.), what do they do? They think of going to a movie, or a restaurant. Perhaps visit a museum at the weekend, or a walk in the park. Some like to annoy a neighbour or family, whilst others potter in the garden.
The more concerts we host, the more they will enter people’s minds; the more the press will include them in the “what to do” listings online and in their papers; the more they will be accessible at times and places more convenient than now. The more concerts you arrange, even for a handful of people, the more music grows to become an essential part of their lives, and at the moment that is truly a God-given gift that most people are missing out on.
Now, hold that thought! On this theme of ‘Go to a concert’ Everyone likes Street Concerts!
And, what can be more exciting for most people than the involvement in sharing live music, whether it be classical, jazz or pop!
Which brings me to the very recent street concert in Sydney. “Visions of Vienna”
The sails of the Sydney Opera House were alive with moving images of paintings by famous Austrian artists. And the music presented in the Opera House Concert Hall by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Austrian Conductor Ola Rudner was a colourful selection of polkas, waltzes and marches. As the music played the people in the street began to dance. It was wonderful, colourful and glamorous!
I think it’s time we found new and innovative ways to make music training more widely available to young people, and to start this during childhood.
When his Auntie left him a piano in her will, Welsh singer, Aled Jones decided he wanted to learn to play Beatles Songs on his very own piano. Needless to say this intriguing beginning began his career with the end result – Aled’s first self-titled album by the time he was 11.
We’ve reached the beginning of the end.
Which brings me to Kids’ Educational Stories about Music. You see, I can’t resist the opportunity to once again mention my children’s books. Just thought I’d throw in a plug for it while we’re all here.
“I was lucky all the time in having great teachers,” says clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. When I asked him about special ways his early teachers helped him, he mentioned his elementary school band director who was “enthusiastic and cheerful, no matter what,” and also a private teacher he had in high school who taught him how to practice with purpose. But the teacher who seems to have had a life-changing impact was his first private teacher, with whom he studied for about a year during junior high at a music store in San Francisco. That teacher instilled in young Mr. Stoltzman the idea that he could indeed become a musician.
Other musicians have cited similar confidence boosters when asked about the especially helpful things a teacher did for them. Here are teacher reminiscences from Mr. Stoltzman and other professional musicians.
Richard Stoltzman — “He taught me both saxophone and clarinet,” says Mr. Stoltzman of his first private teacher at that San Francisco music store. “He didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t play classical music and improvised music.” At this store, young Mr. Stoltzman played his first “crossover recital,” performing Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust” as well as a classical piece. “This was a big moment for me, that my teacher allowed me to do those things and encouraged them.” Then the Stoltzmans moved to Ohio. “I was so sad to leave that teacher. At my last lesson, he looked me in the eye and said something like, ‘You can do it. You can play music. Don’t stop.’ If somebody believes in you, that makes you say to yourself, ‘Well, this person believes in me. So even if I don’t think I can do it, I guess somehow I better keep doing it.’”
Isabel Trautwein — “My confidence was very low at the end of my undergraduate years. I was close to quitting because I was so uptight and just couldn’t stop worrying that I might play out of tune,” says Isabel Trautwein, violinist with the Cleveland Orchestra. “Then I went to Cleveland to study with Donald Weilerstein. He used the ultimate non-judgmental approach. He never used criticism. He would go through a piece line by line and wanted to know what I was trying to say, as a person. He would say, ‘In this phrase, where are you going?’ My eyes would open wide. I would think, ‘I don’t know. I’m just trying to play it in tune. I’m trying to play it well.’ But that’s a terrible goal. So he would say, ‘OK, but do you want it to be gutsy? Or dark? Are you going for the gypsy approach? Are you going for fantasy? ’ He had all these great words. He’d also say specific things like, ‘Feel your index finger when you play.’ It was a mixture of musical cues that have to do with the character and musical feel, and then physical cues that had the ability to take your mind away from that voice that says, ‘Oh, that wasn’t good,’ the critical voice. If I’m thinking about my fingertips, I’m not going to be able to judge myself on what just went wrong. Weilerstein’s lessons were only about the violin. Never psychoanalytical. It helped a lot.”
Paula Robison teaching at New England Conservatory. Courtesy, New England Conservatory and Andrew Hurlbut.
Paula Robison — “I had been studying with Marcel Moyse for about five years, and was already in the professional world of music as well as the artistic one, but I still had many questions,” says flutist Paula Robison, who studied with this renowned teacher at the Marlboro Music School. “One day I came to a lesson with the Concerto in D of Mozart. I played the first movement. Mr. Moyse was silent. He puffed on his pipe, in deep thought. Minutes passed. I waited. Then he slowly said (in his wonderful French accent) ‘Paula, I have teach you many theeng, but now you MUST GO YOUR OWN WAY.’ I was shocked. I felt like a bird kicked out of the nest. But he was right. It was time for me to fly. And I did.”
Jennifer Undercofler — “I am so thankful to all my teachers for their tireless commitment and dedication, but the one lesson that stands out was the lesson I learned from the great Dorothy DeLay,” says violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, who studied with Ms. DeLay at Juilliard. “She told me to go to the library and listen to all the recordings I could get my hands on and attend concerts as much as possible, to listen and learn as much as possible. She thought it would be incredibly helpful to study the phrasing, tempi, sound, and technique of all performers so that I could imbue my own sound with this insightful study and thoughtfulness. This purpose of being able to teach oneself with the right tools, so as to ‘own’ your sound, was the greatest lesson of all.”
Jennifer Undercofler — “I’m probably most grateful to my first piano teacher, a graduate of the Paris Conservatoire, who was deeply creative, with a wonderful, wry sense of humor. She always expected more out of me than I thought I could give. I remember her assigning me an Ives etude (I must have been 10 or 11 years old), declaring that she hated it, but knew that I would probably love it. She proceeded to break it down with me over the coming weeks, with considerable gusto. She was right, of course—I did love it. I don’t know many teachers, even now, who would have taken that particular plunge with an elementary school student,” says pianist and music educator Jenny Undercofler, whose fascination with ‘new music’ has continued ever since. “In a similar vein, I remember Jerry Lowenthal calling me when I was a masters student at Juilliard, to tell me to make time to play ‘new music’ on the Focus Festival. I was so surprised and flattered by the call, and of course I then played in the festival, which further opened the ‘new music’ door. I think of this when I encourage private teachers to have their students play with Face the Music. Their ‘endorsement’ can make a world of difference.” Face the Music is a ‘new music’ ensemble for teenagers that she started as an outgrowth of her work as music director of the Special Music School, a New York City public school.
Toyin Spellman-Diaz — “The impetus for my interest in music came from my first public school music teacher in fifth grade,” says the Imani Winds oboist, Toyin Spellman-Diaz. “She inspired in me a love of seeing a project come to fruition. She put on musical productions. She would play the piano, rehearse the choir, have kids get costumes. She had crazy ideas and somehow made them come to life and did it with determination and joy. I remember watching her as a young child and thinking that even though it was a lot of work, she enjoyed what she was doing. I remember thinking, ‘I would really like to do something like this when I grow up.’ I sang in the choir. She introduced me to the flute and I played in the school band. I wanted to follow in her footsteps and be a music teacher,” says Ms. Spellman-Diaz, who has a studio of pupils now. She also serves as another kind of teacher during Imani Winds concerts, with the informative comments that she and others in the quintet share with the audience before each piece.
Headline Image: Sheet Music, Piano. Public domain via Pixabay.
“My thanks to my parents is vast,” says Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboist with the Imani Winds woodwind quintet. “Without their help, I would never have become a musician.”
Many professional musicians I’ve interviewed have responded as Ms. Spellman-Diaz did, saying that their parents helped in so many ways: from locating good music teachers, schools, and summer programs, to getting them to lessons, rehearsals and performances on time, while also figuring out how to pay for it all. In addition, there are those reminders (often not well received) that parents tend to give about not forgetting to practice. Ms. Spellman-Diaz received her share of reminders, noting that “at some points, I didn’t feel like practicing. Dad’s going to be thrilled that I’ve admitted that it helped that he nagged me to practice. For decades he has been bugging me to admit that.”
But beyond these basics, when I ask musicians to recall something especially mhelpful that they’re thankful to their parents for in terms of furthering their musical development, the responses tend to focus on how a parent helped them find their own musical way.
Toyin Spellman-Diaz as a teenager, during a summer she spent at the Interlochen Arts Academy. Courtesy, Interlochen Arts Academy.
Toyin-Spellman Diaz: The non-musical goal her parents had while looking for a good private flute teacher for their daughter during elementary school had a profound effect on Ms. Spellman-Diaz’s musical future. “They wanted an African-American teacher so I could see a classical musician who looked like me, to show me that there were African-American classical musicians out there,” she says. Her second flute teacher was also black, as was one of the three oboe teachers she had during high school, after she switched instruments. “It absolutely made an impact and is partly why I play in the Imani Winds.” This woodwind quintet of African American musicians was started in 1997 with much the same goal her parents had: to show the changing face of classical music. However, one of her flute teachers was also into jazz. “I think my parents were trying to steer me toward jazz. They would have been really excited if I became a jazz flutist,” she says. But classical music won out, and that was fine, too. “With my parents, it was knowing when to let go and let me find my own voice, my own passion for it.”
Jonathan Biss: This pianist credits his parents with creating an “atmosphere that I didn’t feel I was doing it to please them or because it was good for me. I was doing it because I loved music.” When he was young, he too sometimes needed practice reminders. “But if they said, ‘Go practice,’ which wasn’t often, it was always accompanied by ‘if you want to do this.’ Their point was that you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, but if you choose to do it, you have to do it well.”
Paula Robison: After she started flute at age eleven, her father realized that she had a special flair for it and “saw a possible life for me as a musician,” says Ms. Robison. He knew regular practice was essential, but he didn’t want to become an overbearing, nagging parent. So when she was twelve, they shook hands on an agreement: she promised to practice at a certain time every day and if she didn’t, it would be all right with her for him to remind her. That went well until one day during her early teens when she was “lounging around on the couch” during the hour she was supposed to practice. He reminded her of their agreement. She says she angrily “stomped up the stairs” to practice and “whirled around and shouted, ‘Someday I’m going to thank you for this!’” And she has. “I thank my father every time I pick up the flute.”
Liang Wang: When asked what he was most grateful to his parents for, this New York Philharmonic principal oboist says, “They allowed me to be what I wanted to be. A lot of parents want their kid to fit into what they think the kid should do. Oboe was an unusual choice. There aren’t many Chinese oboe players.” But he fell in love with the sound of the oboe. They supported him in his choice. He notes that his mother “wanted me to pursue my dream.”
Mark Inouye: When asked about the best musical advice he received as a young musician, Mark Inouye recalls something his father said to him at about age eleven, after a particularly disappointing Little League baseball game “in which I had played poorly,” says this principal trumpet with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. The pep talk his father gave him carried over to his beginning efforts on trumpet, too. He says his father told him, “You may not be the one with the most talent, but if you are the one who works the hardest, you will succeed.”
Sarah Chang: “Mom understood I had enough music teachers in my life. The best thing she did was leave the music part to everyone else and be a mom,” says violinist Sarah Chang, who started performing professionally at age eight. “Bugging me about taking my vitamins, eating my vegetables, fussing about the dresses I wore in concerts. . . She was always encouraging, my number-one supporter.”
Headline image credit: Classical Music. Notes. Via CC0 Public Domain.
The Venezuelan youth orchestra scheme El Sistema is perhaps the world’s most famous music education program today. It’s lauded as a revolutionary social program that has rescued hundreds of thousands of Venezuela’s poorest children. Simon Rattle has called it “the most important thing happening in music anywhere in the world.” Classical music education is back in vogue, now aligned with the rhetoric of social justice.
However, the training of social or ethnic Others (the poor, the destitute, the non-white) as classical music performers is hardly a new idea, and delving into its long history may improve understandings of El Sistema outside Venezuela, which are currently very limited. While this training might have provided a helping hand to the most disadvantaged in society, it also had less benevolent aspects.
The music conservatoire has its roots in the conservatorios, or orphanages, of Renaissance Venice. Young female orphans were trained in music at institutions such as the Ospedale della Pietà, where Vivaldi worked. These institutions served a clear charitable purpose, providing for destitute children and aiming to turn them into productive citizens. Yet it’s worth noting a couple of further points: discipline and profit.
The Ospedali Grandi’s purpose was primarily to regulate the city’s social environment, and along with the opportunities provided to impoverished girls went strict control over their day-to-day lives. As Vanessa M. Tonelli notes, the young musicians had to submit to an inflexible monastic routine: silence, lots of work, and little leisure time. When the English music historian Charles Burney visited in the eighteenth century, he noted “good discipline observed in every particular,” and he described the orchestra as “under the most exact discipline,” with its musicians “under that kind of subordination which is requisite in a servant to a superior.” Clearly, then, musical training was an extension of the Ospedali’s social control. It also had an economic angle: concerts by the orphan girls became a major attraction, and the Ospedali were thus able to turn their musical talents into profit, enriching the institutions and their administrators by eliciting larger donations.
Naples, too, had a conservatorio system, in which, as David Yearsley writes, music “was drummed into thousands of children in a system of forced labor…. There was huge international demand for the fashionable Neapolitan style, and the conservatories fed it.” Employing a training system that was “often cruel,” these “music mills” forged highly trained performers for export across Europe. Their art “belied the inexorable regime of study, discipline, and punishment that lay behind it”: Burney described sweatshop-like conditions, with students practising ten hours a day with only a few days off per year.
Caracas Brass, El Sistema. By Agonzalez. CC-BY-SA-4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Yearsley posits a “dialectic of musical enlightenment: on one side of the split screen was the musical workhouse of the poor orphans, on the other, the courtly chamber filled by the most elegant music played by bewigged and fully-trained instrumentalists.” Enchanting music emerged from conditions of control and exploitation.
The alliance of coercion and beauty was not limited to Europe. The Spanish Conquest of the Americas saw missionaries fanning out across the continent and founding schools that taught music as a core subject. A key aim was to instill in the indigenous population what the Spaniards called policía–order, Christianity, and civilization. Music education thus served as a handmaiden of colonialism.
In nineteenth-century Britain, music education was promoted among the poor as part of a drive for moral and religious improvement. Howard Smither argues that a key motivation was the political protection of the upper and wealthy middle classes. Music was seen as a way of keeping the workers out of taverns, increasing their productivity and decreasing their opportunities to discuss revolutionary ideas. Similarly, David Gramit underlines how nineteenth-century educational reform in Germany reaffirmed the social and economic order; music education proponents “sought to create a disciplined but docile labor pool” and thus promote more efficient capitalism. Grant Olwage explores how the perceived efficacy of music education as social control in Britain made it an obvious tool for disciplining and “civilizing” the black population in its colony in South Africa.
What all these programs had in common was an attempt to order and control social Others. They reveal music education in its guise of disciplinary practice, and thus as profoundly ambiguous. As Michel Foucault argues, discipline is effective and productive, as the high level of performing skill attained by many of these musical trainees attests. But discipline also “imposes unequal, asymmetrical, non-reciprocal relations” (James Johnson), and produces docile, apolitical subjects. Music education thus brings benefits, but they often accrue as much to the educators as the educated (as economic and symbolic capital) and may be accompanied by significant (if hidden) costs.
Training, discipline, profit: these three threads run through the history of music education of social or ethnic Others. Let’s now turn to Venezuela.
El Sistema has been lionised by the international press as a revolution in artistic education and a beacon of social justice. Clearly, then, there has been a failure to connect it to similar music education initiatives stretching back half a millennium and to take account of the darker side of music education. For all the contemporary talk of a “revolutionary social project,” El Sistema offers little that is new—its core ideas were presaged in sixteenth-century Latin America and nineteenth-century Europe–and such programs have historically been reactionary, not revolutionary.
Historical precedents alert us to the possibility that alongside El Sistema’s undoubted productivity lie discipline and profit. And indeed, the Venezuelan program displays a familiar urge to control social Others and benefit from their musical activities. Founder José Antonio Abreu has said: “As an educator, I was thinking more about discipline than about music.” Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, meanwhile, have become mainstays of the global music industry, attracting the kind of international praise and wonder that Venetian orphan musicians did centuries earlier, and generating considerable revenue in the process. Like the Neapolitan conservatorios, it drills young performers intensively to fulfill the desires of audiences across Europe; once again, the musicians’ “naturalness” is celebrated, their unbending training regime overlooked.
To understand El Sistema, we need to remember music education’s two faces. The press and public have fixated on one–“rescuing” and training the poor–and have largely ignored the other: discipline and profit. Only when the second is fully grasped can a proper assessment be made.
Headline image credit: ‘Maestro. Orchestra. Conductor’. Public domain via Pixabay
I just reviewed yet another “hot off the press” piano composition. It was posted on Facebook by someone I don’t know – either as a person or by reputation. It looks good, but that is only because note-writing software has become so easy-to-use that anyone with the most basic knowledge can quickly crank out a “could-have-been-published” looking piece.
This particular piece doesn’t sound very good. It is mismatched. The notes themselves are at an upper-beginning level, yet it’s written with a complicated key signature and accidentals only an advanced student could understand. There are notational errors. Yet, I know that many unknowing teachers will print it off and rush it to their unfortunate students before the day is out without knowing better.
My professional life is better because of my Facebook presence that I control from the comfort of my hilltop home in a small town. I have made connections with numerous wonderful teachers I might not have met otherwise. I have discovered new books and interesting repertoire and also have contributed my two cents when I felt called to do so. I recognize, however, that I have been thrown without rank or file, onto a massive heap of piano teachers. Perhaps I stand out because of my reputation, but probably not. Up until recent times, the gatekeepers of quality have included respected publishers and one’s reputation through professional associations. Facebook’s format equalizes everyone regardless of accomplishment or education. There is no gatekeeper here.
I work in an unregulated industry as an independent music teacher in the United States. No professional degrees, training, or licensing of any kind is necessary to start up a studio. One simply needs to hang a sign and gather willing students. While this has been a longstanding issue in our field, recent trends in social media have combined with advances in technology to make everyone look equally valid on the screen. It is impossible to discern from a glance whether one’s content is senseless, stellar, or stolen.
With the ease of creating websites, music teachers have jumped into the writing arena. No credentials are needed to set up a site, write something, and post links in every professional music group on Facebook. The volume is overwhelming and often includes blog posts that are only copies or rewrites of someone else’s work. From appearances on screen, there is no way to sort the good from the bad and unethical.
Likewise, when questions are posed in groups, anyone can answer. There are no algorithms measuring the veracity or usefulness of an answer, or even the level of competence of the person responding. Running parallel to this is an anti-educational drumbeat that attempts to elevate those who have no formal education in their field to the highest level of achievement simply because they have passion for what they do. “People don’t know what they don’t know” as the old saying goes, and on Facebook no one seems bashful in rushing to confirm the truth of this statement. On the ubiquitous blue and white screen we all stand as equals — or at least we look like we do.
Adding to this are the wearisome writers who purport that “having fun” should supersede the steady and sturdy learning that is required to gain success in any field. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with fun, but students subjected to a form of “teaching” with only pleasant, mindless activities devoid of content or educational merit will never see a reasonable level of achievement — certainly not enough for them to gain entry into a respectable music school.
Untrained teachers whose main goal is keeping kids happy are falling into this trap by droves by using well-marketed, but substandard and mostly self-published literature that is woefully lacking in sound pedagogy. There is a bandwagon mentality of rushing to download the latest composition or method, which leads to a sense of belonging to the coolest group in high school – I mean – on Facebook. But, when one method advertises that “Our teachers do not need to possess advanced playing skills, prior teaching experience or a music degree. They must simply love to play the piano…” where is it all headed?
Parents would never allow their children to study math with someone who simply had a passion for adding up numbers, yet many sign them up for music lessons without researching the qualifications of the instructors or the soundness of the materials. The books are slick, the websites dynamic, and the appearances on Facebook omnipresent. But does the emperor actually have any clothes?
With 8,000 piano teachers in one group and several thousand in others, it is an unmanageable task to separate the wheat from the chaff. I suspect that these groups will have short shelf lives moving forward as their members begin to realize the unreliability of the information and the questionable value of material shared. What this backlash will create is yet to be determined, but I trust it will be a positive, quality-driven platform. For me, this can’t happen soon enough.
What is the human touch in online learning? How do you know if it’s there? What does it look and feel like? My epiphany on this topic occurred when a student told me “I thought I would have done better if I had a real teacher.”
This pronouncement triggered a cascade of questions: Why didn’t she see me as real? Because we weren’t in the same physical space? The physical separation of instructor and students creates a psychological and communications gap, and the missing element is the perception of people as real in an online environment — the human touch. Did she think the computer produced the instruction and the teacher interaction? How could this happen when I felt deeply involved in the course — posting detailed reading guides and supplementary materials, leading and participating in discussions, and giving individual feedback on assignments? Was technology getting in the way or was it the way I was using it? In the online classroom we hope that the technology becomes transparent and that students just have a sense of people interacting with other people in an online learning community. And this issue isn’t limited to students. Instructors are sometimes concerned that they won’t be able to achieve the energy of the face-to-face classroom and the electricity of an in-person discussion if they teach online. It’s a matter of presence and personal style.
Internet Cafe after Jean Beraud. Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr
We can create the human touch by establishing an online presence – a sense of really being there and being together for the course. To be perceived as real in the online classroom we need to project ourselves socially and emotionally, and find ways to let our individual personality shine through whatever communications media we’re using. We can look to our own face-to-face teaching style for ways to humanize an online course. What do we do in a face-to-face classroom to make ourselves more approachable? We talk with students as they arrive for class, spice up lectures with touches of humor and relevant personal stories, treat discussions as conversations, and sometimes depart from what we planned so we can follow more promising asides.
To translate these techniques for the online classroom we can look to the issue of physical separation. We use the terms “face-to-face” and “online,” but online isn’t synonymous with faceless and impersonal. In fact, faces can contribute to the human touch. Pictures of the instructor and the students, brief instructional videos, and video-enabled chat all provide images of real people. They add a human touch and contribute to a more vivid sense of presence — of being perceived as real. And posting short introductory autobiographies helps course participants establish personal connections that pave the way for open communication and collaboration. With the use of strategies like these the technology may begin to recede from consciousness, the focus can shift from technology to people, and ultimately the technology may even seem to disappear as people just interact with each other.
Once you’ve established a sense of presence, you want to maintain and extend it. Regular, brief, informal announcements like those we typically make in a face-to-face class — a welcome message at the beginning of a course, reminders of due dates for assignments, current news items relevant to course content — help make our presence felt and assure students that we’re there, we’re working along with them, and we’re interested in their progress and success. Using our normal conversational tone for any online instructional posts (the agenda for the week, descriptions of readings, instructions or prompts for discussion posts) reinforces that sense of personal style. A practice of poking your head in to asynchronous discussions and making brief comments lets students know you’re there and available for help, but avoids the impression of dominating the discussion. Audio or video-enabled synchronous meetings provide a place where people can be themselves, join in informal discussions, show their enthusiasm for their subject matter with individual presentations, or experience the energy of brainstorming sessions — much as they would in a face-to-face classroom. All these techniques can contribute to that human touch, helping us reveal our real selves and engage our students in a vital online learning community.
What personal touches have you used online? Have you found particularly successful techniques you’d suggest others try?
Fall is upon us. The temperature is falling, the leaves are turning, and students are making their way back at school. To get a glimpse into the new school year, we asked some key music educators share their thoughts on the most important issues in music education today.
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“The history of music education in the United States is integrally linked to general educational policies and initiatives, as well as American culture and society. Rationales for why music is an important component of students’ education have utilized utilitarian, aesthetic, and praxial arguments, often attempting to connect the goals of music learning with the educational priorities of the day. In the “data driven,” high stakes testing milieu of today’s educational reform movement, music educators find themselves having to defend not only music programs, but also the teaching profession in general. Political rhetoric and shrinking budgets have too often resulted in the false choice of ‘basic subjects’ over other areas of study, such as music and art, that can provide meaningful ways of understanding the world and equipping individuals to live a ‘good life.’ In this environment it is important that music teachers remain strong, articulate advocates for the value of music in the complete education of children, and to not resort to superficial reasons for music’s inclusion in school curricula. All persons deserve the opportunity to experience a life enriched through active musical participation that includes creating, performing, and listening to music. Robust school music programs help to provide the foundational understandings to make that possible. As Karl Gehrkens, former president of the Music Supervisors National Conference, stated in 1923, ‘Music for every child; every child for music.’”
“Access to quality music instruction is the most important issue in music education today. Some American children have a daily opportunity to make music during school with a certified music teacher who assists them in creating music, performing music, and responding to music. However, many children do not have this opportunity. In some cases, children may have daily access to a music teacher, but that music teacher may not organize instruction in a way that offers the opportunity to create, perform, and respond to music. Many children have access to a music teacher only a few times per week and oftentimes the lack of resources for that music program leads to a subpar experience for students. Due to a lack of state level policy regarding music education, many children have no music teacher in their school building. Although there are rich opportunities for outside of school community music in the United States, many children cannot afford to pay for music instruction outside of the school setting. Citizens interested in making a difference in music education must advocate for a well-prepared, certified music teacher in every school building. Music needs to be mandated at least twice a week in a dedicated space at the elementary level and every secondary student should have the opportunity to participate in choral, instrumental, and general music.”
“The most important issue in music education today is one that has existed for as long as has formal music education: assessment. The term raises many eyebrows, and I believe in viewing assessment for both its positive attributes and for the dangers it can present. Assessment of student work is vital for accountability, curriculum development, and instructional planning, but assessment can be dangerous when it accounts only for standardized measures, when it is used punitively, and when it does not properly inform educational decision-making. Good assessment of student work in music should help students to understand their own progress, and allow them to explore music creatively. Assessment of music teachers’ work is just as crucial because music teachers must be outstanding musicians, pedagogical thinkers, and instructors. Similar to assessment of student work, assessment of teachers should help to inform teachers of their strengths and areas for growth. Good assessment of teachers should provide feedback for improvement of planning and instruction, and should encourage teachers to incorporate new ideas, technologies, and types of interaction with their students. Assessments of teachers should be based on their actual performance rather than on that of their students, as is the unfortunate case in many high-stakes testing scenarios. Thoughtful, positively focused assessment can be a powerful motivator for educational progress and change, and can help students and teachers alike to participate creatively in music.”
“With the current trend towards turning student evaluations into teacher accountability measures, we risk narrowly focusing music education to those skills based elements that can be easily measured. As music teacher educators we need to resist the urge to succumb to the standardized testing movement and broaden our students’ notions of what it means to be musical. We need to ensure a learner centered music education for all students that fosters creative thinking and divergent outcomes, such as composing, improvising and other forms of sonic exploration and expression through traditional and non-traditional approaches to music making.”
“The most important issue in music education today is the lack of understanding shown by policy makers, school leaders, local politicians, and governments of the value of systematic and successful music learning across the lifespan, especially for our children and young people. Engaging in active music learning over a sustained period generates measurable physical, psychological and social benefits (as well as cultural benefit) that are long-term for the individuals and groups involved. The scientific evidence of music’s value (from clinical science, neuroscience, and social science) is increasing every day. Although we don’t yet understand clearly all the mechanisms of how music learning can promote long-term benefit, there can be no doubt that music can make a powerful and positive difference to health (physical, emotional, cognitive), whilst supporting different aspects of intellectual functioning (such as literacy) and fostering social inclusion and cohesion amongst and across diverse groups. Investing in high quality music education should be a priority for all, not just the lucky few, because music can transform lives for the better, across the lifespan.”
